20. Burke & Wills Fountain 1867
Burke and Wills Monument
Wendy Jacobs, Ballarat Heritage Architect, has remarked on the irony of erecting a fountain to explorers who died of thirst! The Burke and Wills expedition began from Melbourne on 20 August 1860 to cross the continent from south to north. Wills had been a resident of Ballarat and his father, a physician, had a surgery in Humffray Street. There was much deliberation about the site and payment for a monument - beginning on 16 December 1861 and ending on 4 November 1867 when the present monument was completed.
Ballarat Centenary (1935) p35 "After the failure of the Burke and Wills Expedition, the citizens of Ballarat decided to erect a monument to the memory of the ill-fated explorers, especially Wills, who had been a resident of Ballarat, his father having a chemist's shop just above Marks' Corner in Sturt Street. The original plan for this monument (now in The Ballarat Historical Society Museum) is quite different from that adopted. Only enough money was raised to place an ugly lump of basalt in position. This unsightly mass remained till 1865, when a new committee was formed to collect money to complete the modified monument. On August 28th 1865, Mayor T. Davey laid the new foundation stone."
The inscriptions on the plaques read:
